The Hollow of Fear: Book three in the Lady Sherlock Mystery Series Page 14

  Fowler waved his arm in an expansive gesture. “She wouldn’t wish to be the mistress of all this?”

  “If she wished to be the mistress of a fine estate, she could have achieved that easily. Half of the largest landowners in England had proposed to her.”

  “Really?” Fowler sounded almost impressed.

  Treadles was confounded. All those fine proposals—and she threw away her respectability over a married man?

  “Or perhaps it was one-quarter of the largest landowners.” Lord Ingram turned to the subject of the discussion. “Does that sound about right?”

  “Even one-quarter is a highly exaggerated figure,” said Miss Holmes. “It’s true that she received proposals from two gentlemen with considerable landholding, but one was deep in debt and the other elderly and in search of a fourth wife. On the other hand, there had been an industrialist, who, if he had been accepted, would have been able to purchase for her an establishment equal in scale and refinement to Stern Hollow, without feeling too great a disturbance in his pocketbook.”

  Lord Ingram gave his friend a baleful look. “I have never heard of this industrialist.”

  “They met during your honeymoon, from what I understand.”

  “Huh,” said Lord Ingram.

  “Very foolish girl, that Miss Charlotte,” said Miss Holmes, with wry amusement.

  “Huh,” repeated Lord Ingram. He turned to the policemen. “And there you have it, gentlemen.”

  Fowler, however, was not so easily satisfied on the subject. “The last time you were an eligible man was a long time ago, my lord. That Miss Holmes wouldn’t have entertained an offer of marriage from you then doesn’t imply she wouldn’t have changed her mind during the intervening years.”

  “Whatever the state of her mind, I didn’t propose to her then and I will not propose to her now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” Lord Ingram chortled, a derisive sound. “First, I am deeply disenchanted with marriage in general. Astonishing, isn’t it? Second, I am not bold enough to wed Miss Holmes, even if she were to prostrate herself and make an impassioned argument for our union.”

  The woman in question whistled softly. “Now that’s a sight I’d pay good money to see—Charlotte Holmes on her knees, begging you to marry her.”

  11

  Before the policemen were shown out, they made clear, albeit with great politeness, that the entirety of Stern Hollow was subject to search.

  Lord Ingram indicated his willing cooperation and made a request of his own. “One of the three ladies who went into the icehouse, Miss Olivia Holmes, is of a much more sensitive temperament than Lady Avery and Lady Somersby. Coming upon Lady Ingram has been a great shock to her. If you gentlemen could speak to her first, so that she can put this behind her as soon as possible . . .”

  Treadles’s eyes widened. “Would this be the same Miss Olivia Holmes who is Miss Charlotte Holmes’s sister?”

  “Correct. She was Mrs. Newell’s guest—and consequently now my guest.”

  “A small world, this is,” said Fowler, his tone gentler now that the interrogation had finished—for the moment. “It will be no trouble at all to see her first.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen. Most kind of you.”

  The head footman arrived to show Scotland Yard to the room where they would conduct the rest of their interviews. When they were gone, Lord Ingram glanced up at the gallery, then at Holmes.

  Their eyes met. She rubbed her bearded chin. “By the way, Ash, you bowdlerized my pangram. I’m devastated.”

  “I don’t know why you believed I would have ever committed the original in writing, in any of my scripts.” He took a deep breath. “Will you come down, Bancroft, or should we join you up there?”

  Bancroft descended a spiral staircase and approached the fireplace. He was a slender, finely built man who usually appeared much younger than his actual age. But he had lost some weight, which emphasized the delicate lines that webbed the corners of his eyes. And his gait, otherwise smooth and graceful, gave an impression of jerkiness. Of agitation.

  “How did you get here so fast?” Lord Ingram asked.

  “I was at Eastleigh Park. You almost gave Wycliffe an apoplectic attack with your note. I talked him out of coming here himself, but that meant I had to act as his emissary.”

  “Why were you at Eastleigh Park? Since when do you visit Wycliffe?”

  Bancroft was the most remote of the four Ashburton brothers. During the London Season he occasionally accepted invitations to dine at his brothers’ houses, but rarely issued any of his own. Lord Ingram seldom met him except to discuss the more clandestine concerns of the Crown.

  “I am obliged to account for myself to His Grace the same way you are—he doesn’t order me to it as often as he orders you, but it happens. And I thought it would be better for me to call on him now, so as to be spared a family reunion at Christmas.”

  “Excellent thinking, that,” said Holmes.

  Bancroft gave her a chilly look and said to Lord Ingram, “You weren’t planning on making introductions?”

  “This fine gentleman here is Mr. Sherlock Holmes’s brother, Mr. Sherrinford Holmes.”

  Bancroft’s eyes widened. He studied Holmes from head to toe, more than a little astonished. “I see. I should have expected an envoy from Sherlock Holmes, given the nature of the case. How do you do, Miss Holmes?”

  “I’m very well, thank you, my lord. Should we ring for a fresh pot of tea?” asked Holmes. “You’ll approve of the cake.”

  The cake that she hadn’t touched. Granted, the modified orthodontia she wore to alter the shape of her face did not make eating easy, but the Holmes of old would have found a way.

  “No tea for me,” said Bancroft. “Tell me what you have found out, Ash. Is it really Lady Ingram’s body in the icehouse?”

  “I wish it were otherwise.”

  Bancroft ran his fingers through his hair. “Why? Why did it happen?”

  Lord Ingram couldn’t remember the last time his brother sounded so baffled—or so perturbed. “I wish I knew. If Moriarty is playing a game, I fail to understand the game’s objective.”

  “And the police? Do they know anything?”

  “Do you remember when you sent your man Underwood to fetch Miss Holmes from that tea shop in Hounslow?”

  “Yes, you were with her at the time.”

  “Our meeting has been reported to the greater world by ladies Avery and Somersby—and the police are entirely seduced by the obvious. If this keeps up for much longer, I will need to become a fugitive.”

  “What about your children?”

  This question earned Bancroft a sideways look from Holmes. Bancroft was hardly one to be concerned about other people’s offspring, even if the children in question were his niece and nephew.

  “Wycliffe will claim them, no doubt, and raise them to be stiff, pompous younger versions of himself.”

  Bancroft nodded slowly. “It hasn’t been a smooth year for you, has it?”

  Lord Ingram laughed softly. “Not altogether, no.”

  “I’ll see if I can view the body. Anyone interested in joining me?”

  Both Holmes and Lord Ingram shook their heads.

  “Very well, then. I’ll leave you to your work.” He hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry I can’t do more. It is imperative that we not breathe a word about Lady Ingram’s betrayal of the Crown.”

  When he had gone, Holmes said, “He does look a bit worn down. Perhaps my powers over the males of the species are more legion than I suspect.”

  Lord Ingram rolled his eyes. “Your powers are exactly as legion as you suspect—you’ve never been one for underestimating yourself.”

  She smiled slightly and touched him on the arm. “Frankly, I’m a little disappointed that Lord Bancroft came, instead of the duke—I was looking forward to one of His Grace’s deadly lectures. But now we must carry on.”

  Treadles wished he had some time to think. Charlotte
Holmes’s presence was hugely problematic. As a potential material witness, she needed to be interviewed. But Treadles couldn’t simply point Chief Inspector Fowler to Sherrinford Holmes and tell him to proceed.

  Or could he?

  It would be the right thing to do. The proper thing to do. But it would require him to admit that Sherlock Holmes, whose help had been instrumental in several of his biggest cases, was not only a woman, but a fallen one unwelcome in any respectable drawing room. The very thought was enough to make his head throb.

  Perhaps it was a good thing then that he had no time to think. They had scarcely settled themselves in the blue-and-white parlor, bedecked with pastoral paintings, when Miss Olivia Holmes was shown in.

  “Miss Holmes, thank you for taking the time to speak to us,” said Fowler in his most avuncular voice.

  Treadles hadn’t known what to expect, but it was not this stiff, unsure woman. She might be pretty enough if she smiled, but as she sat down, smiling appeared very much beyond her.She studied Fowler, her eyes devoid of trust. And they remained devoid of trust as she provided one terse answer after another.

  After Fowler had inquired into every facet of the icehouse discovery, he said, “I am interested in your opinion, Miss Holmes. You were acquainted with Lady Ingram. Can you think of anyone who might have wished her harm?”

  “I had been introduced to Lady Ingram,” said Miss Holmes, drawing that distinction with a trace of impatience. “So I could have claimed an acquaintance, I suppose, but I knew her very little.”

  “I thought Society was small.”

  “It isn’t big. But it would be akin to asking a constable in the street what he might know of you, Chief Inspector.”

  “I see. But I understand that your sister Miss Charlotte Holmes is a good friend of Lord Ingram’s. Would that not have earned you a place in Lady Ingram’s circle?”

  “Not in the least. A man’s wife is the one who issues invitations to functions that they host together. And Lady Ingram had never invited my sister—or myself—to any of her events.”

  “Why do you suppose that was the case? Was she jealous of the friendship between Miss Charlotte and her husband?”

  “I didn’t know her well enough to speak to that. If she was jealous, then it was over nothing. My sister and Lord Ingram have always conducted themselves with the greatest propriety.”

  Treadles couldn’t help interjecting himself into the interview. “Yet I understand that Miss Charlotte has been banished from Society because of an act of impropriety with a married man.”

  Miss Holmes stared at him, her expression at first dumbstruck, then furious. She took a deep breath. “And that man was not Lord Ingram.”

  “Thank you, Miss Holmes,” said Fowler, his tone soothing, “for your time and cooperation.”

  Miss Holmes nodded curtly and rose. But instead of walking out, she stood in place. Fowler and Treadles, who had also come out of their chairs when she got up, stayed on their feet and exchanged a look.

  “Did you remember something, Miss Holmes?” asked Fowler.

  “No, but there is something that bothers me. I found Lady Avery searching my room yesterday. She later told me that she and her sister, Lady Somersby, were looking to see whether Lady Ingram might have left messages behind as to her whereabouts.”

  “Yesterday, after Lady Ingram was discovered dead?”

  “No, well before. Even her confession came while the icehouse was still in the distance.”

  Fowler appeared to ponder this new information. “Where did ladies Avery and Somersby think Lady Ingram might have gone?”

  “They weren’t sure, but they weren’t above suspecting Lord Ingram of keeping her under lock and key, possibly somewhere on this very estate.”

  “Given that she was found dead on this very estate, perhaps that was not such an outlandish charge after all.”

  “You are wrong, sir. Lady Ingram’s body in the icehouse makes those women’s assertions more outlandish, not less.”

  Miss Holmes stood straighter now, her voice stronger, a fiercer woman than Treadles had first given her credit for. “People thought it was a little odd—perhaps very odd—that Lady Ingram had left for Switzerland without any notice. But they didn’t worry about her. No one worried about Lady Ingram, ever. Not even in the immediate aftermath of the rupture between her and her husband, when everyone learned that she had screamed that she’d only married him for his money. They didn’t worry about her because they knew him. They knew that his character was above reproach.”

  “We do not always know people as we think we do,” said Treadles.

  “We do not. But in Lord Ingram’s case, Lady Ingram lost absolutely nothing for confessing that she was a cold-hearted fortune hunter. She didn’t lose her pin money. She didn’t lose her accounts at London’s leading dressmakers. She didn’t even lose the yearly birthday ball in her honor. He continued to extend to her every courtesy and privilege that came of being his wife—and that was the only reason she was able to keep her place in Society. Because he didn’t withdraw his support.”

  “Perhaps he was planning, even as he maintained a façade of gentility, the ultimate revenge,” suggested Fowler.

  “And then he chose to make his wife disappear on the night of a crowded ball, in a way that could only ever lead to unsatisfactory answers? You think Lord Ingram couldn’t have done better than that if he had indeed been scheming?”

  Fowler had no good answer for that.

  “Regardless, this is not the first time I encountered Lady Avery and Lady Somersby since the end of the Season. I can tell you with complete confidence that when I last saw them before this gathering, they weren’t remotely concerned with Lady Ingram’s fate. Lady Somersby said it was her feeling that Lady Ingram had had quite enough of Society, something deeper than mere end-of-the-Season weariness. Her sister questioned whether it wasn’t something to do with a latent animosity many felt toward her.”

  Fowler raised a brow. “Latent animosity?”

  By now Scotland Yard had received the impression that Lady Ingram had not been beloved, but there was a stark difference between the absence of universal acclaim and the presence of widespread ill will, however subterranean.

  “There are very few heiresses among the women jockeying for eligible gentlemen on the marriage mart. And the cost of failure is high: lifelong dependence on disappointed parents and indifferent brothers, perhaps even the necessity of becoming a lady’s companion or, worse, a governess. No one would have thought any less of Lady Ingram for marrying the richest man she could find, certainly not when he happened to be both striking in appearance and sterling of character. Her success was a fairy tale, something to aspire to.

  “And if that fairy tale was to gradually lose its potency, well, such is life. What was not supposed to happen was her brutal honesty. The unspoken rule has always been that if a woman marries for money, she keeps that to herself and maintains an appearance of interest in her husband. Because that is what his money paid for. She is never supposed to not only confirm that she has never loved him but also denigrate him in the same breath for his said-to-be half-Jewish blood.”

  “I didn’t know Society ladies cared that those of Jewish roots should not be taunted for that fact,” said Treadles.

  “What? No, they didn’t care about that. They cared that Lady Ingram didn’t just tear the fairy tale in two but spat on it. They cared that this sent a shiver through all the men of Society. If a paragon such as Lord Ingram couldn’t find a wife who genuinely loved him, what chance did the other gentlemen have? That lesson made them more cautious. Which, in turn, meant that unmarried women found it more difficult to land good husbands—and to keep up the illusion once they had.”

  Fowler blinked. “That is an extraordinarily cynical observation.”

  Yet highly riveting.

  “That was Charlotte’s analysis—she dissects things differently. I think people didn’t like Lady Ingram because they admired Lord I
ngram and felt he’d been treated badly. And then there were others who simply disliked her demeanor. When she made her debut, she appeared more genial. But as time went by, she became more and more unapproachable—and women don’t like women who are too haughty.

  “In any case, that was ladies Avery and Somersby’s position earlier this autumn, not that anything had been done to Lady Ingram but that she might have taken the initiative to put herself out of reach. But here at Stern Hollow they have been consumed with potential disasters that might have befallen her.

  “Ask them what brought on this concern, so strongly that they were willing to risk being caught poking into other guests’ rooms. I don’t know enough to make concrete guesses, but my sense is that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

  With that, Miss Holmes nodded again and left.

  “Well,” said Fowler, “I always enjoy a case more once witnesses start quoting Shakespeare, don’t you?”

  Livia was still shaking as she climbed up the grand staircase. The house felt deserted, even though Mrs. Newell’s guests were still on hand. But the shooting, the games of charades, the play that would have been put on—dear God, to think that she’d rather hoped she might be considered for the part of Desdemona—everything that had been planned lay by the wayside, like so many dandelions trampled by a party of riders.

  Instead, the gentlemen played endless games of billiards, making quiet remarks between echoing clicks of cue stick on ivory. The ladies slipped in and out of one another’s rooms; fear, suspicion, and speculation swept along torrents of whispers. And the servants, already unobtrusive in a well-run household, seemed to have disappeared altogether.

  In the beginning, there had been knocks at Livia’s door, too. But she’d steadfastly refused to answer, not wanting to see the gossip ladies or anyone else who might either wish to commiserate or glean clues from what she could tell them—certainly not in the wake of all the speculation about Lord Ingram and Charlotte! Now no one came to call and she felt both relieved and spectacularly left out.